Management acts to impose its terms on 400 Regional Rail workers.

June 10, 2014|By Paul Nussbaum, Of The Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA — SEPTA has moved to impose management's terms in a long-running labor dispute with Regional Rail workers, which union leaders said could prompt a strike that would halt all commuter rail service at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

SEPTA's goal apparently is to risk a strike now, when ridership is lower, rather than next winter, when more commuters and students rely on the system. Regional Rail trains carry about 126,000 riders a day.

"We need to get an agreement now," SEPTA General Manager Joseph Casey said Monday. "Seven-thousand other SEPTA employees have already accepted this wage package, but these 400 are holding out."

SEPTA's chief labor relations officer, Stephanie K. Deiger, on Monday alerted union leaders that SEPTA had sent letters on Friday to Regional Rail engineers and electrical workers, describing its intent to give them raises proposed by SEPTA effective next Sunday.

The unilateral move by SEPTA "is probably going to mean a strike," said Stephen Bruno, vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

A strike now could be relatively brief, at least initially, as Gov. Tom Corbett is prepared to ask President Barack Obama to intervene if the workers walk out, the governor's representative on the SEPTA board said.

Corbett could ask Obama to create a presidential emergency board to mediate the dispute, compelling the Regional Rail workers to return to work for 240 days.

If the railroad workers strike Saturday, they will not be joined by SEPTA bus and subway workers, said Willie Brown, president of Transport Workers Union Local 234, the largest of SEPTA's 17 unions. The TWU's 5,000 members, whose contracts expired earlier this year, have authorized a strike, but they will not walk out yet, Brown said.

"It wouldn't affect us," Brown said, noting that the TWU is "exploring our legal options" in its efforts to resume contract negotiations with SEPTA. The two sides have not met since April 6.

The last strike by SEPTA railroad workers was a 104-day walkout in 1983.

At issue is a long-running dispute over the value of an increase in transit workers' pension benefits and the railroad unions' request for retroactive wage increases to the date their contracts expired.

The 210 electrical workers, represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 744, have been without a new contract since 2009, and the 220 engineers, represented by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, have been without a new contract since 2010.

The electrical workers will get a raise of 11.5 percent Sunday, and the engineers will get a 5 percent raise Sunday and an additional 3.5 percent raise on July 6, SEPTA said in its letter.

Wages for electrical workers would increase by approximately $3 to $29.50 an hour, on average. Electrical workers on average earn $55,120 a year.

The top wage rate for engineers would increase by $2.64 per hour, to about $32.50 an hour. Engineers, who typically work six-day weeks with extensive overtime, now earn an average of $95,290 a year, SEPTA said.

BY THE NUMBERS

•$32.50 - Top hourly wage for SEPTA's 220 engineers, after a $2.64 increase.